CAMERANO: Rude girls go hungry

IT'S SATURDAY, THE FIRST day of July, and the first thing on our mind after arriving in Camerano is getting some food.

Quickly we find a pizza place called L'Altro Mondo and Philly and I order a tomato and mozzarella panino (sometimes called panini’s back home) to share. It’s our first dinner in Italy and wouldn’t you know it, our much anticipated panino arrives and it’s not, well, “panini-ed”.

This doesn’t stop us from eating it, but it’s easy to understand our disappointment when we were expecting a flattened grilled sandwich with steaming slices of tomato and melted cheese and instead receive slightly toasted bread with lukewarm mozzarella and cold cherry tomatoes.

We might have given up on the restaurant right then and there had it not been for our American peers. They are sitting at our table and are wise enough to splurge for a pizza pie. It looks tasty. Jealously, we watch each slice disappear. We sit for some time scrutinizing the girls’ facial expressions in an attempt to decipher just how good the pizza tastes.

Deciding the pizza is palatable we take a break from staring at our fellow diners and spend the next moments casually insulting each other.

“I’m hot.”

“Shut up Berit, you’re such a whiner.”

“I know, I’m the whiner,” Berit answers. “Caitlyn’s the communicator, Philly’s the smart one, and Ann is the bitch”.

“Hey, I’m not the …” Ann says but stops herself. “Oh Berit, why don’t you take my garbage because that’s what you are – trash.”

“You guys stop bickering, that’s what you are - The Bickersons,” Philly snaps.

Several delightfully rude minutes later something catches my eye. Could it be? A lone slice left on the plate to shrivel in the summer evening heat?

As tempting as it is, we figure snatching the whole piece would be too noticeable. So we sample some slightly chewed crust. It’s pretty good (good enough, in fact, that following night we indulge in a pizza of our own).

We mill around a little longer, forgetting the leftover slice for a moment, and when curiosity steers my eyes back to the lone pizza slice … it is missing!

Frantically my eyes dart around to see where it’s gone.

The plate is there, but the pizza is not. Finally my eyes settle on an American girl standing nearby. This is the first time I’ve seen here. She is friends with one of the girls that ordered the pizza and was therefore an heir to the remaining piece.

She has the pizza in her hand.

I think I watched her eat the whole thing. It was like a train wreck - I tried to look away but I couldn’t.

And just like that, it was gone.

- Caitlyn Slivinski